As the Grand Tour enters the final leg, Team GSMA assess the latest Mobile Health solutions

Having departed Belfort, Team GSMA have now begun the final leg of the Grand Tour and will soon be entering Switzerland. Unlike the stage one, there was no rest day at the end of the second leg, meaning that riders will be cycling for six straight days with little respite. With each member of Team GSMA being pushed to their physical and psychological limit, we were eager to discover if and how the Tour’s mobile health solution was assisting them.
As we found out in the the first leg of the Tour, our riders found the Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) to be a particularly useful tool. Now that our riders are fully familiarised with the overall health solution, we asked them if the Orange GT Gateway app had helped them through their journey.
Grandtourorange app
Team Captain, Pete Montgomery, found it interesting to see how his body was adapting the strains of this multi-day intensive activity. Here mobile was extremely useful in measuring this, ‘Every morning our readings are taken and transferred from the weight scale and blood pressure monitor using NFC into the app on the phone. The app itself talks to other apps on the phone as well as the continuous heart rate monitor I am wearing which communicates over Bluetooth LTE. All this data is then seamlessly synchronised with the Orange cloud.’
Most importantly, the Orange GT Gateway app has been easy to use – serving as a useful hub in which our riders’ performance data can be easily accessed. According to Gavin, the more he used the app, the easier it was to use, ‘now we’re in stage 2 I’m really getting into the swing of it. I found the app incredibly interesting, it monitors and reviews my weight, HR, BP, sleep, blood glucose all in one place, giving me a really good insight into what was going on with my body. There are so many features on the app, and I use all of them, including the the event info, facts and social element – It’s really useful.’
Grand Tour final leg 2
Indeed, because the Orange GT Gateway app is able to store and display so much information in one platform, it has been useful for all of our riders – and for different reasons. For example, Simon found it useful in calculating his food intake, ‘the real benefit is in looking to see what carbs you’ve had during the day, perhaps to prepare for a night’s sleep or the evening ahead. Recording this in the app has helped me understand what I need to eat, slow release carbs perhaps, so that I have a better chance of a restful night’s sleep, and avoid hypos during the night.’
The team will now undertake a tough uphill ride to Yverdon-les-Bains and Morzine, then continue downhill past Lake Geneva, before reaching their destination of the tour in the historic city of Geneva. Visit Connected Living throughout the next few days as the Tour reaches its climax, and find out more about Team GSMA and the latest in mobile health solutions.